Art: CWArtists

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Still to be chosen were committees for Chicago, Detroit, Santa Fe, California. No sooner had the list been published than a resounding howl arose from academicians, long used to a monopoly of government decoration. Museum directors in every case headed the committees, but in those cities that had many museums the chairmanship seemed to fall to the curator who had the greatest sympathy for modernists. The New York Committee, which in the nature of things will have the greatest number of indigent artists to provide for, was viewed with greatest alarm. Smart Mrs. Juliana Force is the widow of a Manhattan dentist and longtime friend of Art Patron Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. As one of the first members of the Whitney Studio Club and Director of the Whitney Museum she probably knows as many U. S. painters as anyone in the country. During the past two years she has done much practical charity by tactfully buying a great many more pictures than the Whitney Museum has any immediate use for. On occasion her tongue can be as sharp as one of her late husband's drills. Faced by the protests of the conservatives, she snapped: "This is a relief measure. We are interested in knowing only one thing about any artist—is he in need of employment? My instructions from the Government are to relieve artists in distress, not to promote any particular kind of art. ... I will work to the limit but I won't waste my time fighting." Neither a member of a committee nor in immediate want, Artist John Sloan who three weeks ago took over the pupils of the late great George Luks (TIME, Dec. 11), enjoyed the row hugely. 'The trouble is," said he, "the natural result of throwing corn in the chicken coop. There are bound to be feathers flying."